The invention relates to the field of computerized user authentication.
User authentication, in computers, is the process of determining whether a user is authorized to access computerized resources. User authentication techniques may be classified into three categories.
The first category may be referred to as something you know (e.g., a password). This form of user authentication may be the most common form of computerized authentication. The main drawback of the category may be that something that you know may be forgotten, stolen, copied, or the like. Users may use easy to remember passwords based on their personal information that may be easy to guess, deduce, determine with a minimal amount of brute force effort, and/or the like. Furthermore, users may use similar or identical passwords for different purposes, which reduces the security of the password.
The second category may be referred to as something you have. This form of user authentication helps avoid forgetting (something you know), copying a password from an email, or the like. However, it may require that some object (e.g., a smart card) be with you when you want to be authenticated. Furthermore, such an object might be stolen and then becomes something an imposter may use to access secured resources.
The third category may be referred to as something you are. This form of human authentication may rely on unique characteristics (usually biological characteristics, i.e. biometrics) of users to verify a user identity. In this category of authentication, there may be no need to remember anything, to carry any object, or the like, in order to be authenticated. The main drawback of this category may be that the unique characteristics cannot be replaced, such as amputation of a finger. In addition, biometric sensors may be expensive (i.e. retinal imagers), have insufficient accuracy (i.e. automatic facial recognition), and/or the like.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the figures.